Whatever source I’m half remembering vastly predates the whole paleo thing. Point is largely that citrus doesn’t have a particularly large amount of vitamin C. Vitamin C - Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. And a good amount of animal sources have as much or functionally enough to get us by. When raw or fresh.
We don’t actually need that much vitamin C, either to survive or to be healthy. And access to fresh food as general thing is usually more than enough. Its only once you start getting into storage foods or very limited diets that scurvy becomes an issue. Hence why we mostly saw issues in sea travel and military campaigns. You cook the food and the vitamin c breaks down, if you cook it a lot to nearly nothing. Which is why a switch from fresh lemons as the maritime ration, to a concentrated cooked down lime syrup lead to the re-occurrence of scurvy. Even fruits when cooked or preserved tend to not have enough vitamin c to keep us alive.
